An Alton Brown Cookout
Kooky Cooking Tips Show the Art and Science of Food Preparation
June 30, 2002 -- Alton Brown uses all kinds of strange implements for cooking: hair dryers, telephone books, trash cans.
But, he says, "The brain is the most important tool in cooking."
On his TV show Good Eats, which airs on The Food Network, Brown
emphasizes the science of cooking, but he does it always with tasty
results in mind. It is science in service of culinary art.
For All Things Considered,, Brown recently met with NPR's Korva
Coleman in a Washington, D.C., backyard to show off some of his more
entertaining techniques and to talk about his new book, I'm Just Here
for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking. "I'm like a really goofy
home ec teacher," he says.
That goofiness has a purpose -- to get people to pay attention to what he
has to teach them about food. And sometimes, the goofiness is a natural
byproduct of his unorthodox techniques -- as when he dons welding gloves
so he can handle hot charcoal.
